I continue to reflect on how satisfied I am with the three years since I retired. As I started considering retirement five years ago, I was partly inspired by Dorothy Day's saying that the last part of life was for letting go of things and letting God take over. My hope for retirement became "to be" rather than "to do", to give a lot of the time over to simply being in God's love.
For the most part that hope has been realized. Most mornings are given over to God and me. When I don't have company, I have a morning routine that I keep. It is not a time schedule. I start when I start and finish when I finish, often around noon.
Recently I let myself get too busy for about three months preparing and teaching a New Testament course. While it enriched my life with God and hopefully the lives of those who took it, it was more "busy" than I want my retirement to be. I always feel sad to hear retired people say, "I am so busy, I don't know how I had time to go to work." With God's help, I will not let that happen.
I do want to continue helping in parishes on weekends. I find that very satisfying. I also want to be more faithful in keeping this blog. It has taken the place of my writing in my journal. I would also like to take time in the afternoon for another bit of centering prayer, but so far this has been spotty.
I tended to be a workaholic and I wondered whether retirement would agree with me. So far it has been a great blessing.
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